Re: the Jan 2008 APRS Telemetry experiment at Athens, despite all the
neat web toys for collecting and analyzing data, it is important to
remember that telemetry data can be effectively 'decoded' directly
over the air using many of the current APRS software packages.
This is especially useful for local projects such as emergency
communications where web connections may be out of service or
otherwise unavailable, or an I-Gate is not in range.
For those of you using UI-View and who can copy the W8UKE-1
Athens APRS digipeater directly, you may wish to try your hand
at direct over-the-air telemetry decoding while we are running
the current tests. The UI-View telemetry tool is an advanced
application which will take some study, but here are some tips.
Within UI-View, the telemetry tools are found in the top toolbar
(far left) 'FILE' tab, under 'HISTORY/TELEMETRY'. Read the HELP
sections provided when you first click this tab, then define the
station-to-copy as 'W8UKE-6'.
In order to 'decode' our W8UKE-6 demo temperature data, you will
need to set up the 'PARAMETERS' fields for "Analogue 1:" as follows:
UNITS = Deg F
A = (leave blank, not used in our current tests)
B = 3.5294
C = -475.5 (be sure you input this as a 'minus' value)
You may disregard the rest of the PARAMETERS page settings.
Once set up, the UI-View telemetry application will run in the
background collecting data until you stop it. It saves all data
to a standard ASCII text file for handy later reference/analysis.
It also allows you to minimize the display screen until needed.
Having this separate page makes it MUCH easier to pick the telemetry
data out of all the rest of the APRS channel traffic.
An actual January 12 example looked like this:
The raw telemetry packet at 7:39 am EST:
W8UKE-6>APOTC1,ATHENS*,:T#074,154,212,227,233,165,00000010
Which UI-View decoded and displayed as follows:
UI-History V 1.42 [W8UKE-6 Telemetry]
2008-Jan-12 07:39:32 (local time) Seq.No. 074
Analogue 1: 68.0276Deg F Analogue 2: 212 Analogue 3: 227
Analogue 4: 233 Analogue 5: 165
Bit 1: Off Bit 2: Off Bit 3: Off Bit 4: Off
Bit 5: Off Bit 6: Off Bit 7: On Bit 8: Off
A reminder that W8UKE-6 transmits telemetry once per hour
at approx. :39 past.
73/ted W8KVK Athens, OH
http://w8kvk.com/aprs